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In my previous note on this issue, I mused in support of the claim that that a constitution does not represent the true aspirations, values or ideals (ideas) of the whole of the people as we are often made to believe. I explained that a constitution is, rather, a bundle of the ideas of the ruling class of the time. A constitution is also a parochial arrangement between and among the ruling class only.

That arrangement expressly excludes the ruled, the masses, from the government of the polity. In order to pacify the masses (for excluding them from government), the ruling class invented a mechanism called ‘regular election,’ where the masses are allowed to choose one ruling class from the others. Like a typical idea of the ruling class, regular election is constitutionalised.

In this note, I will use Vladimir Lenin’s analytic to explain why election is a sham just as the constitution which contains it.

According to Lenin, “the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” By this statement, one may notice that Lenin divides society into 2 classes: (a) the oppressor-ruler-politician; and (b) the oppressed-ruled-voter. This division, itself, is in accordance with classical Marxist theory which finds an ongoing struggle between the two classes.

If Lenin’s statement is anything to go by, then, one may say that any person or group of persons who, habitually, put themselves up for election to a public office fall within the oppressor class. By this stretch, one may notice, too, that political parties and their leader, whether in power or in opposition, are oppressors; the only difference being that those in power are oppressors at present while those in opposition, are oppressors in waiting.

Coming home, there are 2 main political parties in our polity – the NDC and the NPP. Both parties have ruled the polity and have, at all material times, maintained their readiness to rule. By this, we may say that the two parties have attained the minimum level of harbituality required to be classified as a part of the oppressing class – the NDC at present and the NPP in waiting.

So, once every four years, we are allowed by our Constitution to, through election, decide which of the two divisions of oppressing class, the NPP or the NDC, is to represent and repress us, the people, for the next four years.